Gennie Gebhart

Gennie Gebhart

Associate Director of Research

Gennie conducts and manages research and advocacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on consumer privacy, surveillance, and security issues.

Prior to joining EFF, Gennie earned a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington Information School, where she published on Internet censorship in Thailand and zero-rating in Ghana, as well as investigating mobile access and technology terms in Myanmar (Burma) and public Internet access in Laos. While at the UW, she also co-founded and led a successful initiative for a university Open Access policy.

Outside work, Gennie is a cyclist, avid CouchSurfer, sticker enthusiast, and friend to all cats.

Deeplinks Posts by Gennie

EFF is teaming up with the Mozilla Foundation to tell Venmo to clean up its privacy act. In a public letter sent to President/CEO Dan Schulman and COO Bill Ready today, we are telling Venmo to make transactions private by default and let users hide their friend lists. Both ...

Since academics and investigative journalists first reported last year that Facebook was using people’s two-factor authentication numbers and “shadow” contact information for targeted advertising, Facebook has shown little public interest in fixing this critical problem. Subsequent demands that Facebook stop all non-essential uses of these...

Strong privacy legislation in the United States is possible, necessary, and long overdue. EFF emphasizes the following concrete recommendations for proposed legislation regarding consumer data privacy. Three Top Priorities First, we outline three of our biggest priorities: avoiding federal preemption, ensuring consumers have a private right of action, and using...

For years, Xinjiang has been a testbed for the Chinese government’s novel digital and physical surveillance tactics, as well as human rights abuses. But there is still a lot that the international human rights community doesn’t know, especially when it comes to post-2016 Xinjiang. Last Wednesday, Human Rights Watch...

With measles cases on the rise for the first time in decades and anti-vaccine (or “anti-vax”) memes spreading like wildfire on social media, a number of companies—including Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, and GoFundMe—recently banned anti-vax posts. But censorship cannot be the only answer to disinformation online...

Today, we’re happy to see WhatsApp fixing the long-standing group messaging problem that we called on them to address: allowing users to decide who can add them to groups without their express consent. This puts users in a better position to control their WhatsApp chats and personal phone number...

In his latest announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg embraces privacy and security fundamentals like end-to-end encrypted messaging. But announcing a plan is one thing. Implementing it is entirely another. And for those reading between the lines of Zuckerberg’s pivot-to-privacy manifesto, it’s clear that this isn’t just about privacy. It’s...